Mars Exploration Rovers Update - February 13, 2004

"Carla Schneider" wrote in message
...
Ron wrote:

[...]
The plan for sol 20, which will end at 8:20 p.m. Friday, PST, is to
do a "touch and go," meaning Opportunity will touch the soil with its
instrument arm around the outpost area Charlie, then stow the arm and
drive. It will head for an area of soil that the rover's miniature
thermal emission spectrometer indicates is rich in hematite. Over the
following few sols, engineers intend to use one of Opportunity's wheels
to spin into the soil and "trench" a shallow hole so scientists can
check
what's below the surface early next week. Knowing more about the
hematite
distribution on Mars may help scientists characterize the past
environment
and determine whether that environment provided favorable conditions for
life.

Any guesses what they will find in the trench ?
I bet they will not find a lot of hematite below the surface,
because it is concentrated in the spheres and the spheres are only
lying on the top.

Gee Carla, where did you get that information? Even the JPL scientists have
said that they have had trouble taking readings from the spherules ecause of
their small size. They haven't said what they are composed of. In
addition, there is no reason to assume that the spheres are only sitting on
top of the soil. Let's wait until they conduct the trenching and report on
their analytical results before we all make such pronouncements, shall we?

There are no sand dunes like at gusev crater, because the spheres
prevent them from forming - is this possible ?

Actually if you look at the picture at the following link. you will see
small dunes in the foreground. Since the rover has yet ot even leave the
crater, nad since the dunes you refer to at Gustev crater are ver small, I
see no reason to expect that these dunes will not be found at the
opportunity site as well.

Could there be an other reason as density that prevents these spheres from
beeing
burrowed below the dust, maybe some electrostatic effect ?
If the spheres were very light the wind would blow them to dunes, if they
were heavy they would be buried below the dust, and there is a lot of dust
falling down if you wait long enough...


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